Casey Kasem Dead? Daughter Receives Permission to Remove All Life-Saving Treatment
The struggle for care of deejay and TV legend Casey Kasem has seemingly come to a close, at least in the judicial system. Yesterday a judge overseeing the feud between Kasem's wife of 34 years, Jean, and his daughter, Kerri, determined that Kerri can resume end-of-life procedures and remove his feeding tube and other IVs.
"It would be acutely harmful for Mr. Kasem to have nutrition and hydration restored at this time," Judge Daniel S. Murphy said on Wednesday, June 11. "This was at the advisement of doctors at St. Anthony's."
According to Judge Murphy, doctors had informed him that Kasem, who suffers from Lewy Body Disease, was not responding to any treatment. Daughter Kerri fought with Jean over how to best proceed, and the two wound up in court, where Murphy made the final decision, which did not sit well with Jean.
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"You have blood on your hands," Jean said as she left the courtroom.
"You just imposed a death sentence," her lawyer, Steve Haney, added.
Judge Murphy ruled that Jean did not act "in the best interests" of the 82-year-old icon when she removed him from specialized care in California at 2:30 a.m. against doctors' orders and moved him to a private residence in Washington State. It caused quite the ordeal, with daughter Kerri saying that her father was being held hostage and suffering at the hands of Jean and the medical staff. However, Jean and her daughter Liberty have argued that Kerri has been the one eager to see her father die.
"We have lived in sheer horror of this girl," Jean said before leaving the courtroom.
She argued that Kasem could still communicate using eye and eyebrow movments and had expressed his will to live. If left in Kerri's care, though, she said, Kasem would surely die.
"Nobody wants Mr. Kasem to die," Kerri's lawyer, Troy Martin, argued. "This is without question the most difficult thing I have ever had to do and Kerri has had to do. This is very, very heart-wrenching. Mr. Kasem is receiving morphine drips. Hydration might be a terrible way to die, but he's receiving medication to keep him comfortable."
"We have tried everything to keep him alive," Kerri told the Daily News on Monday. "We did put him back on fluids, but we had to take him off again because his lungs were filling up. It sounded like he was drowning. It was excruciating to watch. The feeding was backing up because he can't digest. We've been trying for nine days to keep him alive. There's nothing we want more than for our dad to be here with us."
